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QUADRIGA
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A chariot drawn by four horses, used in battle and in athletic games. (See CIRCUS, GAMES OF.) The cut represents a quadriga with weapons as the prize of victory.
QUADRIGARIUS
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A Roman annalist. (See ANNALISTS..)
QUAESITOR The Roman title of the president of an extraordinary or ordinary criminal court (quoestio extraordinaria or perpetua). According to Sulla's rules of procedure, six praetors chosen for criminal cases presided, and, when this number was not sufficient, additional judges, iudices quoestionis, were provided.
QUAESTIO The Roman term for a court of inquiry, either extraordinaria, an extraordinary commission appointed by the senate or people for special criminal cases, or perpetua, an ordinary criminal court for certain defined offences. The first court of this kind was held B.C. 149 to try a case of extortion.
QUAESTORS The Latin term originally given to two officials chosen by the king; they had to track any one suspected of a capital offence. In the time of the Republic they performed the same office for the consuls, by whom they were chosen every year. When the administration of justice in criminal cases came into the hands of the comitia centuriata, the quoestors received, in addition to their old privilege of pleading by the mandate of the consuls, which they lost later, the management of the State treasury (aerarium) in the temple of Saturn. They became recognised officials when they were elected at the comitia tributa under the presidency of the consuls (probably about 447 B.C.). The quaestors had no regular badges of office. In 421 their number was doubled, and the plebeians were granted the right of appointing to the office of quaestor, though they did not exercise it till twelve years later. The four quaestors shared their duties, so that two of them acted as masters of the treasury (quaestores aerarii) and remained in the city (hence their name quoestores urbani), while the other two accompanied the consuls on campaigns in order to administer the military chest. It was part of the duty of the two former to collect the regular revenues of State (taxes and custom-dues) and the extraordinary revenues (fines, levies for war, and money produced by the sale of booty); further, to make payments, which might not be made to the consuls except by special permission of the Senate; to control the accounts of income and expenditure, which were managed under their responsibility by a special class of officials (scriboe); to make arrangements for public burials, for the erecting of monuments, for the entertainment of foreign ambassadors, etc., at the expense of the treasury. Further, they preserved at their place of business--the temple of Saturn--the military standards, also the laws, the decrees of the Senate, and the plebiscita, and kept a register of the swearing in of the officials, which took place there. After the subjection of Italy, four more quaestors were appointed, in 267 B.C. They were stationed in different parts of Italy, at first at Ostia and Ariminum, probably to supervise the building of fleets. Sulla increased their number to twenty, ten of whom were appointed, in the place of the previous two, to accompany the proconsuls and propraetors to the provinces, two to help the consul who remained in the city, and two to help the other two original quaestors at their work in the city. The quaestors employed in the provinces (Sicily alone had two of these, stationed at Syracuse and Lilybaeum respectively) were principally occupied with finance; they managed the provincial treasury, and defrayed out of it the expenses of the army, the governor, and his retinue; any surplus they had to pay in to the State treasury at Rome, and to furnish an exact statement of accounts. The governor might appoint them his deputies, and if he died they assumed the command; in both of these cases they acted pro proetore, i.e. as propraetors (q.v.). Caesar raised their number to forty, in order to be able to reward a greater number of his adherents; for the office gave admittance to the Senate, and the position of quaestor was looked upon as the first step in the official career. The age defined by law was from twenty-seven to thirty years. When the beginning of the magisterial year was fixed for January 1st, the quaestors assumed office on December 5th, on which day the quaestors in the aerarium decided by lot what the work of each should be. Even under the Empire, when the normal number of quaestors was increased to twenty and the age reduced to twenty-five, the office of quaestor remained the first step to higher positions in the State. But the power of the quaestors grew more limited as the management of the treasury was entrusted to special proefecti oerarii, so that the city quaestors had only charge of the archives, to which the supervision of the paving of streets was added. After the division of the provinces between the emperor and the Senate, quaestors were only employed in the senatorial provinces, and were not abolished till the constitution of the provinces in general was altered by Diocletian. Four quaestors were told off for service to the consuls. The two quoestores principis, or Augusti, were a new creation: they were officers assigned to the emperors, if the latter were not consuls, in which case they would already be entitled to two quaestors. As secretaries to the emperor, they had to read his decrees to the Senate at its sittings. From these quaestors was developed, in the time of Constantine, the quoestor sacri palatii, the chancellor of the Empire.
QUATTUORVIRI
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The Roman term for an official body consisting of four men. (See VIGINTISEXVIRI.)
QUINDECIMVIRI
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The Roman term for an official body consisting of fifteen men, especially that appointed for the inspection of the Sibylline books. (See SIBYLLAe.)
QUINQUATRUS A festival celebrated at Rome on the 19th of March, in honour of Mars and (in a greater degree) of Minerva, whose temple had been founded on this day on the Aventine. An incorrect explanation of the name quinquatrus, which means the fifth day after the ides, led to the festival in honour of Minerva being afterwards prolonged to five days. It was celebrated by all whose employment was under the protection of the goddess, such as teachers and their pupils. The latter obtained a holiday during the festival, and began a new course of study when it was over. The former received at this time their yearly stipend---the minerval. The festival of Minerva was also celebrated by women and children (in their capacity of spinners and weavers), by artisans and artists of every kind, and by poets and painters. The first day of the festival was celebrated with sacrifices by the State in honour of the founding of the temple. On the following days the gladiators performed, and there were social gatherings in the houses. On June 13 the minor quinquatrus took place. This festival lasted three days. It was celebrated by the guild of the flute-players, an important and numerous body at Rome. They honoured the goddess as their special patroness by meeting at her temple, by masked processions through the city, and by a banquet in the temple of Jupiter of the Capitol.
QUINQUENNALES
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The officials chosen every five years in the Italian municipalities (See MUNICIPIUM), corresponding to the Roman censors.
QUINQUEREMES Roman ships (q.v.) with five banks of oars.
QUINTILIAN The celebrated Roman rhetorician, born about 35 A.D. at Calagurris in Spain. After he had received his training as an orator at Rome, he went home about 59 A.D., but returned again to Rome in 68 A.D. in the train of Galba. He there began to practise as an advocate, and also gave instruction in rhetoric. In this latter capacity he achieved such fame that he was able to open a school of rhetoric in the reign of Vespasian, and received payment from the State. After twenty years work be retired from his public duties in A.D. 90, and after some time devoted himself to the education of the grandchildren of Domitilla, Domitian's sister, for which he was rewarded by the emperor with the rank of consul. Though materially prosperous, his happiness was disturbed by the loss of his young wife and his two sons. [He died between 97 and 100 A.D.] Of his works on rhetoric, composeed in his later years, we possess the one that is most important, that on the training of an orator (De Institutione Oratoria) in twelve books. This he wrote in two years; but it was not until after repeated revision that he published it, just before the death of Domitian in 96. He dedicated it to his friend, the orator Victorius Marcellus, that he might use it for the education of his son Geta. This work gives a complete course of instruction in rhetoric, including all that is necessary for training in practical elocution, from the preliminary education of boyhood and earliest youth to the time of appearance in public. It describes a perfect orator, who, according to Quintilian, should be not only skilful in rhetoric, but also of good moral character, and concludes with practical advice. Especially interesting is the first book, which gives the principles of training and instruction, and the tenth book, for its criticisms on the Greek and Latin prose authors and poets recommended to the orator for special study. [Many of these criticisms, however, are not original.] Quintilian's special model, and his main authority, is Cicero, whose classical style, as opposed to the debased style of his own time, he imitates successfully in his work. A collection of school exercises (declamationes) which bears his name is probably not by him, but by one of his pupils. [The most recent editor, however (Constantine Ritter, 1884), regards the great bulk of them as genuine.]
QUINTUS SMYRNAEUS A Greek epic poet of Smyrna. Towards the end of the 4th century A.D., he composed a bald imitation of Homer, entitled the Posthomerica, in fourteen books, a continuation of the Iliad after the manner of the cyclic epic writers from the death of Hector to the shipwreck of the Achaeans on their journey home.
QUIRINUS
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The Sabine Dame of Mars, as the god who brandished the lance (from Sabine curis=Latin quiris, the lance). The Sabines worshipped him under this nameas the father of the founder of their old capital, Cures, just as the Romans honoured Mars as the father of Romulus. When the Sabines migrated to Rome, they took the cult and the name of the god of their race to their now abode on the Quirinal hill. In this way Quirinus, though identical with Mars, had a distinct and separate worship on the slope of the Quirinal. He possessed a temple with priests (See FLAMEN and SALII) and a special festival. When, in the course of time, their connexion was forgotten, Quirinus was identified with the deified Romulus, the son of Mars. For Janus Quirinus See JANUS.
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